Fifth Sunday of Lent
Sunday, March 17, 2024
Jer 31:31-34 | Heb 5:7-9 | Jn 12:20-33
Today’s Scriptures speak of God making a new covenant: “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts.”
Covenants center around relationships. A covenantal relationship is all-encompassing.
One might wonder what a covenant has to do with the care of creation. The covenant has everything to do with creation care because our covenant is between God, humans, and all that is. We enter into a relationship that is both a gift and a responsibility, to love and care for everything God loves and cares for.
God writes this covenant into our hearts. Though we often walk away from our covenant, God relentlessly pursues us. God remains faithful. God’s new covenant is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. “And when I am lifted up from the Earth, I will draw everyone to myself.”
In African anthropology, relationships are not only between humans, but also between humans and God, and humans and nature. Everything is connected — therefore, everyone and everything requires reverence and care. Most African communities believe that humans are from nature and, therefore, must keep a very close and reverent relationship with nature. Moreover, it is imperative to protect and nurture nature.
A few years ago, after roads had been flooded in Kenya, I overheard some elders lamenting how the younger generation had become detached and disrespectful of nature and that nature was upset with us. The elders planned to perform cleansing rituals because the flood waters had brought down branches of ancient trees.
One branch landed as if planted in the middle of a road, blocking traffic. The elders saw it as a message from the forest to perform reconciliation rituals, but the young people hurriedly cleared the road. The same week, more rainfall and a similar scenario happened at precisely the same spot.
As a child in Kenya, I heard stories that our ancestors would never cut down trees, till the land, or plant, or harvest crops without first asking for permission from the Great One. They believed that the land and forest belonged to the Creator. Unfortunately, the younger generations have lost the belief that God speaks through nature.
But when Jesus asked God for a sign, God answered, and the crowd heard the voice in the sound of thunder. The crowd exclaims, “An angel has spoken to him.”
In Laudato Si’: Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis impresses on us our responsibility to care for our common home and for the poor—our covenant between God, humans, and all that is.
Additionally, in Laudate Deum, he says, “How can we not admire this tenderness of Jesus for all the beings that accompany us along the way!”
Maryknoll Sister Susan Nchubiri, who earned a bachelor’s degree in religious studies and a master’s in sociology, entered the Maryknoll Sisters in 2004. She served in Hong Kong, and then Haiti, leading various pastoral projects until 2016. In her current assignment, she is a program associate for the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.
The 2024 Lenten Reflection Guide from the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns contains contributions from missioners around the world.
Featured image: Maryknoll Sister Susan Nchubiri attends the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28, held Nov. 30 to Dec. 13, 2023, in Dubai. (Lisa Sullivan/Dubai)
Questions for reflection
What elements in your life help you to feel most deeply your own relationship with nature?
How can you nurture that connection?
Prayer
Oh, Great Spirit,
whose voice I hear in the winds
and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me.
I am small and weak.
I need your strength and wisdom.
Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes
ever behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made
and my ears sharp to hear your voice.
Make me wise so that I may understand
the things you have taught my people.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden
in every leaf and rock.
I seek strength, not to be superior to my brother,
but to fight my greatest enemy – myself.
Make me always ready to come to you
with clean hands and straight eyes,
so when life fades, as the fading sunset,
my spirit will come to you
without shame.
Chief Yellow Lark, Lakota, 1887
